‘Rosewater,’ ‘Birdman’ and ‘Wild’ Headed to Telluride Film Festival

The Telluride Film Festival announced its 2014 program on Thursday, the day before the fest kicks off in the mountains of Colorado — and to the surprise of nobody who’d been paying attention to other recent festival bookings, the Telluride program will include Jon Stewart‘s “Rosewater,” Jean-Marc Vallee‘s “Wild,” Bennett Miller‘s “Foxcatcher” and Morten Tyldum’s “The Imitation Game.”

Documentaries on the list include “The 50 year Argument,” Martin Scorsese“>Martin Scorsese‘s and David Tedeschi’s look at the New York Review of Books; “The Look of Silence,” Joshua Oppenheimer‘s follow-up to the Oscar-nominated “The Act of Killing”; and “Red Army,” Gabe Polsky’s look at the fall of the Soviet Union through its hockey team.

The festival said that other unannounced “sneak previews” will be added to the lineup this weekend.

Telluride also announced that its 2014 Silver Medallion Awards will go to German director Volker Schlondorff, who will screen the new Diplomacy,” 1970’s “Baal” and 1992’s Billy Wilder collaboration “How Did You Do It,” and to actress Hilary Swank. A new DCP of the original cut of Francis Ford Coppola‘s “Apocalypse Now” will also screen.

In addition, guest directors Guy Maddin and Kim Morgan will screen six films, including Robert Altman‘s “California Split” and Howard Hawks’ “The Road to Glory.”

Additional revival screenings will include Orson Welles’ “Too Much Johnson,” while the “Backlot” program of films about artists will feature Walter Fasano’s “Bertolucci on Bertolucci,” Chuck Workman’s “Magician” and Ethan Hawke‘s “Seymour.”

Telluride traditionally keeps its lineup a secret until the day before the festival begins. In the past, it has used that lack of advance word as a way to attract films that would quietly screen in Telluride and then go on to make their official premieres in Toronto, a far larger festival.

This year, though, Toronto declared that it would consider a Telluride booking a premiere, and would not screen any Telluride-bound films during its critical opening weekend, which will take place Sept. 4-7.

As a result, anybody who checked the Toronto schedule would know that films TIFF announced as world premieres or North American premieres – a list that included Jason Reitman‘s “Men, Women & Children,” David Dobkin‘s “The Judge,” Barry Levinson‘s “The Humbling” and Antoine Fuqua‘s “The Equalizer,” among others — could not screen in Telluride.

And they would know that while “Rosewater,” “Wild,” “Foxcatcher,” “The Imitation Game” and a number of others were booked for Toronto, they were playing there after the first weekend, and thus were likely to be Telluride bound.

Steve Pond, awards editor at TheWrap, is also author of the L.A. Times bestseller The Big Show. He has been covering entertainment for more than two decades, and is the industry's most knowledgeable Academy Awards prognosticator.